


Just Passing Through

by Pyrephox



Category: In Nomine
Genre: Gen, In Nomine - Freeform, Shedite, Theft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyrephox/pseuds/Pyrephox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a Shedite of Theft needs a distraction, who better to provide it than clueless angels of Flowers? Nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maybe My Name is Murphy

Some human once said that within every man, there lurked the occasional urge to run up the black flag and start slitting throats. He might have been surprised to see how true that actually was. All most people need before they start going after what they really want is the right skills and a way to shut up that annoying voice telling them that they might get caught.

                Lucky for them, I provide both.

                I’m in an airport, riding a fellow who has one of the most boring lives I’ve seen in a decade, mostly just keeping him from fidgeting while he daydreams about being a superspy and fingers the ID card we swiped from one of the TSA agents. That, and the jacket we’re wearing, got us past the security gate (once I’d transferred over and persuaded the agent behind the computer that she didn’t really want to worry about the fact that the ID and face didn’t match), and now we’re waiting for the courier. It is, quite honestly, the most excitement this poor bastard has ever had in his life.

                A middle-aged woman comes up and asks for directions. Turns out, my horse actually has a useful answer, so we point her in the right direction. I don’t even swipe her wallet; this is a quiet job, not a pleasure trip.

                Another plane disgorges its passengers. Tired, huddled masses, yearning to be free of all the ties that bind and the tedious obligations of the modern world. I swear, one day, once I’ve gotten a Distinction and have some real time to kill, I’m going to come to a place like this, where everyone is just so worried, and spend some time teaching them all to have some fun.

                But not today. Today, I’m scanning the crowd until I see my target: she’s young, brown-skinned, in a tailored suit and carrying a briefcase with a wonderfully discreet (and I’ve been told, unbreakable) little manacle attached to her wrist. I give my horse a little mental nudge, and we start making our way through the crowd, the sea of humanity parting like water before us. One quick little touch, and I should—

                I steer us away at the last moment, ducking our head and shouldering on past the courier. The _celestial_  courier, I am pretty damned sure, as my symphony shivers with tremors of Disturbance. A Celestial song, and one the courier must be good with, because she doesn’t make a sound that the mortals around us can hear.

                The courier was not supposed to be celestial. I was _assured_ \--well. Plans change. Maybe someone tipped them off.  Maybe _Valefor_   tipped them off, because some days, that’s his idea of a good way to make a job fun. I consider, then discard, the idea of jumping him and taking the case. My orders say “quiet”, and that doesn’t cover trying to gnaw a woman’s hand off in the middle of an airport.

                Instead, I get the horse to slide his hand over that of another tired traveler, and make the leap. Across the bridge of skin, from one fascinating universe to another. By the time I’m in the saddle, my target has nearly cleared the gate, and I hurry to catch up. On shorter legs; my new horse is a woman, early twenties, here for a dental convention (what the hell do dentists have to talk to each other about, anyway?). Nice enough, I suppose, and so tired from the flight that I barely have to whisper to get her to on board with the new game plan.

                We follow the courier out the doors to the passenger pick-up. Of course she has a car waiting, and by the look of the driver, I’d say Soldier. I hate getting inside the heads of Hellsworn – usually, their masters have them so fucked up that they don’t even know what they want, anymore, much less how to get it. Plus, the bastards have a better chance of bouncing me and figuring out that I was there. I ain’t taking the chance, not with this.

                Instead, we head for a cab, sliding into the back seat just ahead of some other poor schmuck. I fish the available cash out of the dentist’s purse, all of it, and press it against the window separating the front seat from the back. The driver’s eyes widen. We grin, my horse finally starting to get into this as we say, “Follow that car, and this is your tip.”

                It’s not that easy. It’s never that easy. But five horses, three cars, and one bike later, my current horse is coasting his bike down a broken up road while I scan the scrub woods around us. The road leads to a warehouse complex in the middle of nowhere. Almost looks abandoned, but for the shiny new barbed wire and the glint of sunlight off of cameras closer in. It looks distressingly well-fortified. I nudge the new guy to hide the bike behind a heap of debris from some abortive building project or another, and then we do recon.

                It takes an hour or two before I have a full picture, but once I do, I teach the kid all sorts of fun words for later use. I am, not to put too fine a point on it, screwed like a virgin Lilim in a Shal-Mari brothel. Judging by the Disturbance, there are at least three demons in that compound, and the few people I’ve seen come out all look like the muscled, Soldier type. Rough rides, each and every one, with a few dark horses among them that might blow my cover wide open. What the hell is so important that it takes _three_  demons and a bunch of maybe-Aware humans to manage?

                My horse starts making worried thoughts in the direction of “home” and “parents”; I shush him, remind him what a grand adventure we’re on, and go in for a closer look. There’s a place where the embankment has slipped and torn out a couple of the concrete posts of the fence, and we wriggle our way under the gap beneath. Our shirt gets caught, and then our back. A single note of Disturbance shivers along my symphony, and we freeze.

                No one seems to have heard it, but that was too damned close for my comfort. The last thing I want is to have to abandon this horse when there’s nobody around but pissed-off demons and armed Soldiers. We slide the rest of the way under, then sneak up to a grimy window to peer through.

                …okay, so there aren’t just demons and Soldiers. The warehouse is filled with children and young adults, mostly girls, chained together and being watched over by the burly fellows I’ve seen before. My host wants to recoil in shock and disgust as one of the guards casually backhands a woman who tries to ask for something, but I soothe him down so that I can scan the floor for the important bit of cargo: my case.

                The courier emerges from a back room, case still cuffed to his wrist, and takes a seat next to a woman who has a Djinnish look about her. Or just a human who doesn’t give a shit. From this distance, it’s hard to say. The courier doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere for a while, which matches my intel. It’s the only thing so far that matches my intel, though, so assume that my timetable is down to a day, if that, and not the three I was promised before the Captain of Lust shows up to pick up his mysterious package. I nudge the horse, and we retreat, back under the fence, avoiding cameras along the way, all the way back to the bike.

                As he bikes back home, I think. Valefor wants the case. He doesn’t want it to be traceable to us, because technically, we’re friends with Andre's people. Which means if I get caught…well. I won’t get caught. But I need to figure out my local resources, and how to neutralize three demons and an unknown number of Soldiers along the way.

                It’s a challenge.

                We’re supposed to like those.

                Fuck my life.


	2. Friendship is a Beautiful Thing

“Sweet thing! How’s it shaking?” Preta’s voice warbles from the speakers, tinny, metallic, and chipper.

  
I’ve got a new horse, a hotel room, and I’m sprawled on the bed, staring at the laptop. It is _my_ laptop, no one else’s; a summonable relic designed for the Shedite on the go. A Skype window’s open to a deserted lab. “Like a Polaroid picture? Is that the right answer?”

“Only if you do shake it like a Polaroid picture.”

I give the horse’s butt an obliging wiggle, but let’s face it, a seventy-year-old retiree isn’t going to start anyone’s engines. Especially not a fine figure of a Shedite who, quite properly, has no fetish for the unpleasantly hard and fixed curves of a humanoid body. For its machines, sure, but that’s normal for a Vapulan and must be forgiven. “Is that acceptable?”  
“It’ll have to do, until I can persuade you to swing back to Kansas City for some proper shaking.”

“You sultry tempter, you.” I grinned and gave the screen a caress Preta would be able to see. “If anyone could turn my eyes from duty, it’d be you.”

Preta snorted, like static. “That’s not the way I hear it, babe.” Its voice turned more serious. “And I know you wouldn’t call if you didn’t need something, so out with it.”

“I resent the implication that I don’t value our friendship for its own sake.”

“What implication, sugar? It was a statement. But if you’re serious, then log into my Minecraft server; I could use another dozen eyes or so on this project.”

I sighed. “As much as I wished I could, I actually did call about a tiny favor…”

“Told you.” It laughed on the other end. “Fine, fine. I suppose I owe you after the last field test.”

“Damn right. You never mentioned the part where your ‘personal portable teleporter’ explodes.”

“It’s in beta. I didn’t think I had to.”

“ _Anyway_. Check the databases, if you would be so kind, and let me know what kind of celestial presence I’m looking at here?”

Preta hums to itself. Truthfully, it doesn’t owe me anything – I didn’t lose my horse in that explosion, and it proved to a marvelous distraction for the heist, even if I had to flee the state ahead of investigators on both sides. When you’re a Thief, fleeing is the default state, and it knows that as well as I do. But the first thing a Shedite learns, whether in Hell or on Earth, is that _nobody likes us_. Balseraphs consider us crude, Djinn think we’re shifty (as if we could help that!), Habbalah…are Habbalah, Lilim take too much after their Mother, and Impudites resent the fact that we know humans better than they ever could. So, the smartest Shedim learn to cultivate some allies among our Band, even across political lines.

Doesn’t mean, of course, that we don’t stab each other in whatever space isn’t currently covered by an eye, if it’s necessary, but Preta and I have avoided having our goals cross so far. That’s the closest to ‘friends’ demons ever really get, and this wasn’t a major favor to ask.

Sure enough, a moment or two later, Preta says, “I think I can help out. Judging by your IP, you’re in the middle of nowhere. My Holy Prince doesn’t have any current projects out that way.”  
“If I were after Vaputech, you know I wouldn’t try to drag you into that.”

It only hmphs. A few moments of silence, then, “No major concentrations of demonic activity in that area – no Tethers, no flagged projects, no notable Disturbance.” _Damn_. “Looks like there is an angelic Tether in the area, but it’s small, so it shouldn’t cause you any problems.”

 _Double damn_. But, I could maybe work with this. ‘Quiet’ means nobody tracing it back to Theft. But catspaws are always fun, and what upstanding warrior of Heaven wouldn’t want to shut down a trafficking ring? “What Word?” _Please be War, please be War, please be_ \--

“Flowers.”

“Preta. You’re killing me.”

“What? I thought you’d be pleased, sweetie. They won’t get in your way, unless you’ve decided to send someone running naked through the streets, shooting puppies, kittens, and small children along the way.” It paused. “You haven’t, have you?”

“Of course not. I don’t have anything against cats, dogs, or small children. The running naked might be amusing, though.”

“Take pictures if you do – I’ve got a connection in Media who loves that sort of thing.” Preta paused again. I could almost hear it thinking. “I suppose you’ll want to know where the Tether is?”  
“It’ll help.”

“You’re not going to go play with angels, are you, dear? I thought we’d agreed that you and I would live long, _sensible_ lives, and stay out of Hell for as long as possible.”

“Needs must, when the devil drives, my sweet.”

Preta huffed. “Fine, fine. When you end up at your Heart, I am going to send someone to tell you that I told you so.”

“You won’t come yourself?”

“Do I look stupid to you? Check your e-mail – I’m sending what I know about the Tether. It’s not much; Flowers never does anything particularly _interesting_ , and we aren’t active in the area.”

“Thanks, Preta. I’ll bring you something shiny next time I swing by.”

“Just pick a _name_. I can’t keep calling you pet names for all eternity.”

I grinned. “What collection of mortal syllables could possibly match my magnificence?”

The view of the lab cut out as Preta hung up on me, and I chuckled to myself as I checked my e-mail. In truth, I knew my name. My Heart sang it to me – I could hear it even now, just on the far edge of my consciousness, if I concentrated. But no human language, and not even Helltongue, seemed to have the right…feel to it. So I swiped the names of my hosts as I chose, and kept looking. One day, I was sure I’d come across something nice enough to keep.

  
Until then, I had work to do.


End file.
